Similarities Between The Lottery And Fahrenheit 451

There are many different points of view about human behaviors. Through specific characters mentioned in Fahrenheit 451, “A Very Old Man Enormous Wings”, and “The Lottery”, individual attitudes are exaggerated to the point that their evil motivations behind their behaviors are obvious. Everyday humans attempt to attach the connotation of good to humanity, but it’s just because humans want to look past the fact that we are realistically not good. It is very difficult for us to reflect on our own behaviors. Even though people try to avoid admitting it, we always try to be the best in whatever we do. We naturally make our own survivals the best we can make it. Harming others knowingly and enjoying it is a hallmark of being evil. Good is not only

caring for yourself, but also for the people surrounding you. Evil is just caring about your own well-being and ignoring how it harms other people, animals, and nature. One who is evil does not mind hurting others and might even desire committing this action. The majority of people are definitely not evil, but we are not good either. However, we are entirely selfish.

While trying to make our lives the best they can be, we ignore all other goals and people, often to the extent of harming others, simply just to exceed other people’s outcomes or make our individual lives better than those around us.

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the government keeps knowledge, written in the books from the citizens so that the government stays in power. As Captain Beatty said, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon” (Bradbury 55). The motivation behind their evil is presented as solely caring that they are the ones with the highest authority. Beatty shows he wants to have the highest power by saying that everyone is equal, when really his motivations are for him to be at the top of the pyramid. He is attempting to blame everything on the books. He uses books to mask his selfishness. Beatty said “The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys... you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought (Bradbury 59).” Again, Bradbury uses irony to demonstrate the fact that Beatty uses language (demonstrated in the quote) that means the opposite (Merriam Webster). He uses irony to show an empathic effect to tell Montag that they are at one level (Merriam Webster). However, Beatty is really using sarcasm even though this might not be clear to Guy. Captain Beatty uses books as a shield to hide his selfishness which contributes to him not being good and pure.

The same theme of selfishness applies to “The Lottery.” As said in the “The Lottery", "Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones (Jackson 285).” The thing that they are almost entirely concerned with is if they will get stoned.

The villagers don’t care about the black box or the ritual, but they do care about the stones which signify murder. In “The Lottery”, each villager cares about his or her own individual survival, even if it means stoning one’s own family. An example of a family can be seen through Hutchinson family and their daughter Tessie, who got stoned. They’ve done this for so long, they don’t question how sinful it is. It just seems like the ordinary thing to do for them. That behavior can be proved by “… the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner (Jackson 278).” The quote demonstrates that the villagers can murder someone, then casually continue on with their daily lives. They can do that action without thinking they did anything wrong. “The Lottery” encourages the villagers to have egotistical

habits.

Selfishness is also shown in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. As the narrator said, “With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in.” Márquez demonstrates that this family is simply using the man as a way of income. The narcissistic family thinks of the man as entertainment. To some extent, the wife in the family can be seen as the evil persuasion. The husband only wanted to shelter him in a chicken coop. The wife came up with the idea to charge people coming to look at him. So, the evil motivation behind both of their actions was to gain more money for themselves. While gaining an income from the man, the man himself was being hurt in the process. Just to benefit from the man, the wife also starts telling fake stories about him. She tells these stories thinking that the people coming to see him will be more interested. So she not only hurts the man by using him as a show, but she also uses her self centered behavior to tell lies as well.

Even though we don’t realize how egotistical we are, this demeanor is one of the main reasons that does not make humans good. Through stories like Fahrenheit 451, “A Very Old Man Enormous Wings”, and “The Lottery”, it makes it a lost easier for us to point these specific behaviors out. We usually think about what the best outcome will be for ourselves, making us very selfish. Having a selfish attitude commonly results in harming others in the process. We never realize how hateful hurting someone is because our main focus is to make our lives the best, not other people’s. All we think about is ourselves, not others, concluding that we aren’t good.